exercise will never be my lover. Or even my friend. For me, a workout is more like an annoying coworker I have to see a few times a week.

I think humor is like a shield that lets you get as close to the sad sad flame as possible - far closer, oftentimes, than drama.

For many years I wrote nothing but "I will not sleep with Steve Almond" over and over again, page after page à la Jack Torrance in The Shining. Finally, hundreds of psychotherapy sessions and an intense shaman-guided DMT sweat lodge experience led to a breakthrough, and I was able to write about other people I would not sleep with, and also about people I would.

If you're a beautiful Caucasian woman, and you commit a heinous crime, it's like people don't want to acknowledge the reality of your actions.

It's a challenge of to write a narrator who is doing something that is really unlikeable and morally questionable. A lot of times, you read a book because you like the character, you are cheering for the character; you want the best for the character.

I really want readers to put themselves into the shoes of each character. So the opening lines are an orienting technique: this is where you are, this is who you are. Go.

During my MFA, I was lucky to be surrounded by a really supportive group of peers. And now I get feedback pretty exclusively from freaks only.